Starting is easy, finishing is hard!

When I start on a remix, I usually have some good ideas so the first one to two minutes of the song comes easily. After that I usually hit a block and I'm not sure which direction to take. This can get pretty annoying and tends to delay the completion of the track.

Part of the problem is maintaining the quality of the track, if I start off strong and then slack off then I'll end up with a track that has a good intro and then it becomes weak sauce. This is the opposite of what a good track should do (finish off strongly).

When I'm really stuck I use repetition a lot (like hip hop beats) but unlike hip hop beats which can afford to be repetitive because the lyrics will carry the track, my remixes can't be too repetitive because they are instrumentals. The trick is to add little variations to the repetition by using different drum loops, FXs, and instruments.

Chicago Theme (Perfect Dark) Remix

Perfect dark 64 had some really cool music in it, and one of my favorites was the Chicago theme. I was messing around with the PD tune on the keyboard and I got some good ideas. I collected enough ideas to make a remix so I started plugging in some stuff into fruity loops.

After a little while, it started to sound pretty good, maybe even better than my last PD remix. So right now I'm working on it, I have around 2:30 minutes completed. I'll post it up on youtube when I'm done, hopefully soon (although I tend procrastinate a lot and put up half-done songs)

The remix has a lot of original music in it, so it probably won't be instantly recognizable. But there is a point, maybe about a minute into the track where the Chicago theme kicks in. After about another minute of the Chicago theme, the track fades back to more original music. When you listen to it, everything flows seamlessly and fits in well with the Chicago theme.

I'll post more updates as the track progresses.

Welcome to my blog

How's it going? Thanks for dropping by and reading my blog. Let me introduce myself, My name is Dharshan Raj and I have randomly built up a small fan base on youtube by making remixes and tutorials. A while back I posted a tutorial on how to play Halo 3 main theme. It started to catch on with Halo fans and music fans in general and right now it has over 100,000 views (despite the crappy production quality).

I also make remixes using FL Studio, and so far I have posted up a couple of remixes. Like the tutorials the remixes were also getting good comments so I figured I write a blog as well. When I'm working on new stuff I'll blog about it. So this blog will give an inside look what I'm up to these days.